Category Archives: Electronics

I’ve had a Kobo Arc since December 2012, but last year the USB charging point snapped off in the device and I haven’t been able to use it since.

I tried contacting Kobo and the response was that I should take it too WH Smiths, neither really wanted to help. Kobo didn’t offer anything to help. In fact their customer support was dreadful. Probably the worst customer support I have ever had to deal with, they are even worse than Microsoft and that’s saying a lot.

So after a little look on the web and realising it might be a simple fix I decided to have a go. So I took the back off the device took out the USB charge strip which seemed to be a snap-in. I noticed the female USB part was snapped off the strip so first I tried to solder it back on. But that didn’t really work.

So I ordered a new strip straight off of eBay which cost around £15 but for some reason after I put in the new piece it still isn’t charging. Either the strip was no good which I got or there is another fault I don’t know about. So if anyone reads this and has a suggestion let me know.

During the 80’s and early 90’s there was a lot of inventive people playing around with a new found love in electronics. They would take peices apart to study how they worked. Then with an old broken radio they would see what went wrong and attempt to repair it. Or fail because one vital part accidentally broke.

At this period in our history stores sprang up with the answer to many people’s questions. The likes of Tandy and RadioShack would supply you with the resistors, microchips that you needed.

These stores have since disappeared from the high street. RadioShack moved to the Internet, Tandy eventually disappeared, I think it got swallowed up by Dixons-Currys group. Now just known as Currys.

So the small trade in computer components went online. There was a small part of this large industry where a small circuit board would be recycled into its parts.

People would unsolder its parts and sell them online to other enthusiasts to use in a project. Or simply sell the whole board.

But now after just a few browses of eBay, it’s clear to me this part of recycling is on its way out.

Parts are cheap to buy new in bulk. There are better, smarter chips brought online and now people are just interested in extracting the gold and other materiel to make a profit.

And the invention on the computer game might be one point to ask. Did you prefer taking that radio apart or prefer playing Super Mario!?

A once interesting industry diluted and an education of how things work gone. More modern technology prevails. We are still forever inventive in our ways. But the simple peices of electronic equipment seems no more.